Why even have a minimum wage?

In her Sept. 3 column, Bridget Bush contends that raising the minimum wage hurts women and minorities. By that thinking, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that, instead of just maintaining the minimum wage at its current level, lowering it would actually help those two groups? Not only would employers not have to raise prices or lay off workers, they might even be able to lower prices (OK, now we’re just dreaming) or hire more workers who still couldn’t afford to live on what they were being paid.

In fact, since Ms. Bush implies that the minimum wage itself is a “liberty” issue (after all, private employers can’t legally get together and set a wage, she says), perhaps she might want to advocate doing away with the cursed thing altogether. That way, employers could hire even more workers (who also couldn’t live on what they were getting paid).

I think maybe she’s hit on the answer to the problem: Let the employers pay whatever they feel like paying. After all, it’s a free country, isn’t it?